"That is the best way they believe to get as many Americans out as possible and others. And with regard to finding, tracking down the ISIS leaders who ordered this, we have some reason to believe we know who they are, not certain, and we will find ways of our choosing without large military operations to get them wherever they are."
August 27, 2021
"I’ve instructed the military, whatever they need, if they need additional force, I will grant it. But..."
"... the military — from the chairman of the joint chiefs, the commanders in the field — have all contacted me one way or another, usually by letter, saying they subscribe to the mission as designed, to get as many people out as we can within the timeframe that is allotted."
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"We are gonna kill some people and tell you they did it."
so, my pool is still open...
Come Sept, 11, 2021; will the numbers of American Military in Afghanistan be
HIGHER
or
LOWER
than they were last year (Sept, 11, 2020) ???
Who believes him?
they subscribe to the mission as designed, to get as many people out as we can within the timeframe that is allotted.
So none of them want to get fewer people out than we can within the timeframe allotted?
Again, that’s not the issue here. Given your constraints what else could they be advocating?
Or to quote John McEnroe: “You cannot be serious!”
A bunch of weeks back I wrote what I saw after serving as an EM during the Vietnam War, and then as an employee of a large defense contractor for the last thirty years of my career.
“They all tell you Duty, honor, country,’ but first comes their career.”
I got some pushback on that when I included it n a comment, but can anyone look at what’s happening right now and doubt that I am right?
Where are the proclamations this is the most diverse group of people to ever run an airlift?
Where are the stories about the number of women flying planes and giving orders?
Why aren’t we chronicling the daily team meetings where white Marines are reminded to “check your privilege”?
It’s like these things have nothing to do with running a successful airlift in a hostile war zone.
Shorter Biden: They can have anything but more time, so they cant use anything but what they’ve got.
Kevin asked...
Where are the proclamations this is the most diverse group of people to ever run an airlift?
Ask, and you Shall Receive!
Sergeant Major of the Army prioritizes 'diversity' amid Afghanistan evacuation
Amid ongoing evacuation efforts in Afghanistan, and shortly before an explosion left 13 U.S. service members dead and several wounded, Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston highlighted diversity within the U.S. Army for Women’s Equality Day.
By letter? By letter? WTF.
We had no casualties in 17 months with only 2,000 troops in country.
Why? Because when Qasem Soleimani attacked our embassy, Trump turned him into a smoking crater & sent out a Tweet with an American flag.
‘We will hunt you down and make you pay.’
Who will do it if everyone has left the country? Maybe he meant they would be sent an invoice via What's App.
If the military were to take Biden up on the offer, they would own the result. But under the arbitrary deadline, their ass is covered.
Wait a minute....the Commander in Chief is communicating with his officers in the field "by letter"? I envision a desperate Marine captain taking fire at Kabul airport scrambling to find sufficient postage, taking up a place on an outgoing flight for the bag of mail, then sitting back and waiting for a reply.....hoping the USPS does not toss it in with a batch of mail in ballots and lose it.
This may be disturbingly close to the truth.
TW
"usually by letter"
Really, Joe?
It appears beyond dispute that Gen. Milley was a vociferous advocate of the notion that there was no tactical need to maintain Bagram Airfield (see his June 23 Congressional testimony, for example). It's also clear today that the "closeness" of the vetting operations that Biden has cited as making this operational particularly susceptible to attacks like what we saw yesterday is a function of conducting operations at HKIA, which lacks the security perimeter that Bagram had.
So why would a 4-Star General prefer a civilian air strip to a fortified air base? Because he was placating his boss's desire to get troop strengths down as far as possible, and maintaining Bagram and the embassy would require more troops than HKIA and the embassy (or so they thought...that didn't work out so well, either).
This is gross incompetence, toady-ism at its most deadly. Milley should be cashiered out of the military in disgrace. So much of this, maybe all of it, was avoidable, with just a few sound decisions (don't tie the pullout to 9/11, which puts it in the middle of fighting season, evacuate in strength, etc.). Just awful.
This is such soft bullshit.
I listened to an interview with Donald Trump last night. I wish the entire nation could have heard it, after listening to the bullshit served up by Joe Biden earlier in the day.
Every one of Joe Biden's military leaders need to be replaced. The entire State Dept. leadership needs to be replaced. We've got another 3+ years of these people in office. They have only been in office for barely 8 months, and look around you. Look at the chaos we have going on in virtually every phase of American life.
There is no soft pedaling of this: Joe needs to be removed. His next in line needs to hold on and hope the world has no crises. She and the Democrats have 1 year left in power. After that, we can start to hold things until a new President is put in place. I hope we can make it intact.
“They all tell you Duty, honor, country,’ but first comes their career.”
I got some pushback on that when I included it n a comment, but can anyone look at what’s happening right now and doubt that I am right?"
Have you forgotten the twelve dead Marines at Kabul airport? I think you mean the current Generals at the Pentagon and the recent generals who become lobbyists but don't ever forget the men on the ground.
How do they know it is ISIS already? And how did the Islamic State in Syria get into Afghanistan? Do we need to call them ISISAA now?
Democrats and others in Washington need to be punished for selecting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as our nation's leaders. They are a danger to us all.
What ever happened to "nobody left behind"?
This idea of "as many a possible" is sickening. What happens to the ones we leave behind. Just "screw 'em"?
Or perhaps "no problem. We'll just replace them within illegal aliens".
John Henry
Does it seem strange to anyone else that they are communicating to him by letter?
"... usually by letter..."
That will come in handy during the impeachment trial.
This was not some kind of natural disaster. It was a deliberate event for which they had years to plan. If it was so obviously inevitable, where was the exit plan?
If a building collapses, we try "to get as many people out as we can within the timeframe that is allotted" and no one expects more. But if we intentionally collapse a building, we get everybody out first. We don't cut all the supporting columns except the ones in the lobby, then tell everyone, come to the lobby if you can.
If I wanted to CYA, I would not want to communicate with a politician unless it was in writing. Hence, the "usually by letter". That probably means they were formal memos that got sent over (hopefully via email).
Milley should be cashiered out of the military in disgrace
But he wears so many ribbons on his uniform!
This is just an aside but has anyone else noticed how sometimes Joe Biden is round-eyed and sometimes he is narrow-eyed? His first press conference was round-eyed.
Round
https://allamericannews.com/the-many-faces-of-joe-bidens-first-press-conference/
Since then he's often been round-eyed but, in the press conferences, narrow-eyed.
Narrow
https://www.rev.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Untitled-design-38-1-1536x864.jpg
When he's narrow-eyed he's more or less the crafty politician he always was but when he's round-eyed he's ... likely to go off message even when he's reading the teleprompter.
This AM, I watched the beginning of Joe’s speech. What the fuck was that business about Beau?
Biden must be removed. We’ll have to take our chances with Harris.
I was listening to the president's press Q&A after his remarks yesterday and I wondered, How scripted is this? Did the White House basically demand the questions beforehand and make sure he had an answer he could deliver confidently for each one?
PowerLine's Scott Johnson points this out:
"Ladies and gentlemen, they gave me a list here. The first person I was instructed to call on was Kelly O’Donnell of NBC."
Naaah, I thought. Then I followed his link to Whitehouse.gov. There it is in the transcript. The president actually told us who he was instructed to call on.
This isn't about Republican/Democrat to me. I really couldn't be less interested in arguing the correct ratio of blame between Trump and Biden, and I'm not going to heckle a president during a crisis because he's not my guy. But this is disturbing.
@ wildswan
I'm just glad both of his eyes are still doing the same thing at the same time.
When one eye's Marty Feldman and the other's Lee Van Cleef, that's when you really gotta watch out. It's coming too, mark my words.
"I’ve instructed the military, whatever they need, if they need additional force, I will grant it.
"I have told General Westmoreland to ask for whatever he needs and that I will grant it"
~ LBJ 1965
I know, I know. Vietnam analogies are lazy, but having just finished Sir Max Hastings book on our misadventure in Southeast Asia, was struck by how often the supposedly alpha-male Johnson so meekly deferred to incompetent generals.
Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden have suffered similarly.
"they subscribe to the mission as designed"
But that "mission" is plan B or C, a clean-up operation after the main CF. It wasn't "designed," it was thrust upon them.
Of course, Joe precipitated the CF by design, so he could brag about it on 9/11.
If all military leaders subscribed, and none resigned, that tells us enough.
wildswan said...
This is just an aside but has anyone else noticed how sometimes Joe Biden is round-eyed
Well, he's not Just round eyed, his eyes are as black as night, because of the dialated pupils
Don't get me wrong; i'm not trying to imply, that he's on drugs...
I'm Explicitly Stating, that HE'S ON DRUGS
[Adderal (maybe Ritalin), probably mixed with some of his son's Coke]
The plan that emerged from the fog of Taliban blitz: "get the fuck out of Dodge."
Four more days.
Do the Joint Chiefs and field commanders really communicate with the President by letter?
Just a little too late, wouldn't you say??
Temujin said...
This is such soft bullshit.
I listened to an interview with Donald Trump last night. I wish the entire nation could have heard it, after listening to the bullshit served up by Joe Biden earlier in the day.
When I watched him, I thought...."Now there is a leader" Biden is a joke.
I pointed this out yesterday...but letter? Really? Cuneiform tablets take too long to dry?
There seems to be a two-pronged approach to deflect blame by the executive branch:
1) Its Trump's fault
2) And nobody could have done it any better
While the military and the intelligence services are claiming that they tried to tell Biden, but he wouldn't listen. Which I can believe, but even if true it does not reduce their culpability. They should have resigned in protest. But, since they have no honor, they did not.
"... usually by letter..."
Great, so now Louis DeJoy is involved!
Joe Biden and the JCS couldn't find a ham sandwich if it was sitting on the dining room table.
Total incompetents, the whole lot.
Big Mike said...
A bunch of weeks back I wrote what I saw after serving as an EM during the Vietnam War, and then as an employee of a large defense contractor for the last thirty years of my career.
“They all tell you Duty, honor, country,’ but first comes their career.”
I got some pushback on that when I included it n a comment, but can anyone look at what’s happening right now and doubt that I am right?
You must differentiate. The people in the armed services that make it to Washington DC are overwhelmingly career centered. They are a self selecting group that will do anything to get promoted.
The current crop of Generals in Washington DC are a relatively small group of dicksucking shitheads that are absolutely hated by the people in the armed services not in DC.
Gimme a ticket for an airplane, ain’t got time to take a fast train, lonely days are gone, I’m a goin home, my baby just wrote me a letter
MadisonMan said...
Milley should be cashiered out of the military in disgrace
But he wears so many ribbons on his uniform!
Everyone gets a medal about every three to six months. As long as you don't get an article 15 for a long enough duration you get can sometimes get 2.
People with higher ranks get better time served medals too. Fobbits that never leave the base on deployment get lots of medals. Commanding officers have to spend a lot of time at the end of the deployment filling out the paperwork. They get a medal for that too.
If it doesn't have a V device it is generally for time served.
“Usually by letter” = they won’t talk to me.
So now that we know there’s a paper trail we’re going to need to see it.
"EH said...
If I wanted to CYA, I would not want to communicate with a politician unless it was in writing. Hence, the "usually by letter". That probably means they were formal memos that got sent over (hopefully via email)."
I think you have it backwards. Biden wanted the written letters, to cover his own ass when this goes horribly wrong. And the generals, wanting to stay generals, complied.
@wildswan, my comment refers to flag officers (navy admirals and generals in the other services) and officers senior enough to have “stars in their eyes” (navy commanders and captains, colonels and lieutenant colonels elsewhere).
I have not forgotten the marines killed lately at Kabul, nor will I ever forget the three marine left behind at Koh Tang Island, because no one was willing to jeopardize his career and tell Ford and his civilian advisors “No sir, we are mounting a rescue mission and we will get them back.”
So many actions that could’ve been taken over the last months, weeks, days that would’ve prevented so much of this.
When the president reads stage instructions as a part of his speech and can’t differentiate between the two, we see the joke is on us.
Sure would have been nice to have had a Role 3/Level III trauma center like Bagram's Craig Joint Theater Hospital a short helicopter ride away to evac our wounded to.
What's with Joe Biden's Tah-lee-bahn; it's almost a reprise of Obama's Pah-kee-stahn.
I liatened to a bit of Joe Biden yesterday. I can only take a bit of Joe at a time--too much Joe induces projectile vomiting.
But he said, "we will hunt them down"--and my immediate reaction was, "With what, since you are pulling all the troops out?"
And "we will make them pay". Okay, Joe, if and when the bombers are caught, will give them a "stern talking to". Yeah baby, that's the ticket! Joe will talk butch to them. OTOH, since a bit of Joe Talk will induce projectile vomiting, that just may do the trick.
Achilles: "If it doesn't have a V device it is generally for time served."
That is always the first thing one should look for.
And Thoroughly Modern Milley has....zero.
Imagine, a 4-star general at the tail end of 20 years of combat operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan, which was preceded by a few relevant operations in 91 and beyond, and this cat doesn't have a single "combat distinguishing device".
No wonder Howard worships this guy so much.
Thanks to whoever reminded me of the Koh Tang Island incident. I had forgotten, if I ever knew the story.
[Admiral] Coogan had to weigh up the order from Seventh Fleet to cease hostile actions against the Khmer Rouge against the lack of evidence that any of the men were still alive, he decided that there would be no rescue mission unless there was some confirmation that the three Marines were still alive
He decided to leave them there and they were executed by Khmer Rouge.
I expect we will see something similar.
Howard: "The plan that emerged from the fog of Taliban blitz: "get the fuck out of Dodge."
Four more days."
Howard thinks this entire scenario is another "Hunters laptop" where Team democratical/LLR/Big tech/legacy media could simply make the story disappear.
There are many other allied nations involved dummy and they don't seem eager to drop this conversation and as their own citizens end up as hostages and/or casualties, do you really think you can Jedi mind trick them all into caring as little for their citizens as you do for ours in your zeal to absolve your Dementia-addled man-god from responsibility?
@Achilles, you may be right. In my time in the DC metro area — 1969 through 2015 — I met only two O-6 who wouldn’t walk over their favorite child for that star.
It kind of sounds like Biden strictly limited the number of troops, told the military that the embassy was his first priority, and so they gave him a plan that used only the number of troops he allowed, which could not include Bagram, which they slunk out of in the middle of the night without even telling the Afghan Army commander.
A competent general with any integrity would have resigned, but we have political generals now, man boobs covered in ribbons, who never saw action outside of pearl clutching over imagined threats during the Reichstag Fire... err, I mean J6.
It's a little late to tell the military that they can have whatever they need now.
So will the 2020 ads from Biden help the Ds retain either house of Congress?
Will the background music be, "Nobody Does It Better" or "He's Just a Walk Away Joe"?
"Letters" suggests to me that there is major ass-covering going on here. If I were party to a clusterfuck that I had no responsibility for initiating and controlling, and was in position vulnerable to being scape-goated by cretinous people like Joe Biden, Lloyd Austin, and Mark Milley, I would probably put all communications in forms of letters of which I keep copies for myself.
NCMoss,
Just this morning, I came across this link from Rick T.
so they have time to write letters and biden is able to read and comprehend -
yea for the free world
"So many actions that could’ve been taken over the last months, weeks, days that would’ve prevented so much of this."
You mean like not releasing all of the ISIS prisoners from Bagram? Stuff like that, I suppose.
Iman said...
When the president reads stage instructions as a part of his speech and can’t differentiate between the two, we see the joke is on us.
----
or is it that there is now no fourth wall from the stage/podium >>>> which is as it should be all the time!?
or have the people become dimmer witted?
I've mentioned this in another thread but here goes: During WWII there was a ratio of 1 flag officer per 6000 troops. The ratio is now approx 1 for every 1500. The US military needs to purge 2/3 of its general officer positions and all the attendant positions for officers on said their staffs. We don't have an armed forces; we have a military bureaucracy. We don't have a warrior caste. We have system starred careerists.
"I’ve instructed the military, whatever they need, if they need additional force, I will grant it...
...and we will find ways of our choosing *without large military operations* to get [those responsible for the suicide bombings] wherever they are."
Dip shit.
"If you like your travel itinerary you an keep your travel itinerary."
The Big Rock Candy, er… The Place Joe Biden FuckedUp
In the Place Joe Biden Fucked Up, they’re not goin’ on holiday
They’re runnin’ for their lives, dodging bombs
and trouble is there to stay
They never even have to clean it up, cuz it all gets blown away
There’s a squintin’ old man playin’ kick the can
Where the Taliban rules, allies got fooled
In the Place Joe Biden Fucked Up
Lars Porsena said...
We don't have an armed forces; we have a military bureaucracy. We don't have a warrior caste. We have system starred careerists.
Time for some Heinlein Quotes! (it's Always Time, for some Heinlein Quotes!)
"No Department of Defence, Ever Won a war"
"what kind of Army, has more Officers than Corporals; and more NCO's than Privates?"
After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, JFK fired the head of the CIA for his failure to foresee the reaction of Cubans against the invasion. IOW, there was no great uprising.
Who will Joe Biden fire? No one? Is no one accountable any more?
rsbsail: "After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, JFK fired the head of the CIA for his failure to foresee the reaction of Cubans against the invasion. IOW, there was no great uprising."
Now would be a good time to recall Operation Northwoods and JFK's removal of Lemnitzer as Chairman of JCS.
Who will Joe Biden fire? No one? Is no one accountable any more?
@rebsail, only when it’s a Republican.
Usually by letter… I’m not shocked.
No one gets to speak with the Wizard of Nods because they’ll know he’s not all there. But anyone can write orders on a letter and sign Biden’s name to them.
There’s no way they keep up this subterfuge for 3 more years, is there?!
Tom: "There’s no way they keep up this subterfuge for 3 more years, is there?!"
Well, so far its working like a charm on the lefties/LLR-lefties.
But interestingly, its not working on ANY of the lefties overseas, thats why this isnt going away.
"we will make them pay"
The "big guy" must get his 10%
There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear...
Twice in a lifetime.
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